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Scarborough Hospital-Rouge Valley merger could mean layoffs, bed cuts

Bed cuts and layoffs would likely be part of a merger between the Scarborough Hospital and Rouge Valley Health System, and the closure of an emergency department could also be in the offing, according to the presidents of the facilities.

But they promise that patient care would not suffer — and would in fact improve — even though financial constraints are forcing the hospitals to look at amalgamating.

Robert Biron, head of the Scarborough Hospital, and Rik Ganderton, his counterpart at Rouge Valley, met with reporters Wednesday to discuss how their facilities are trying to deal with a freeze in funding from the province.

Biron emphasized that no decision has been made to merge and one won’t be taken until residents, staff and doctors are consulted to see if the idea even makes sense.

Ganderton said demand for hospitals beds is decreasing because of advances in the provision of acute care. For example, a heart attack patient can nowadays get discharged after only a day of treatment in hospital, he explained.

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As for job losses, Biron explained that major changes underway in Ontario’s health system are making the hospital sector smaller.

“There will be job loss in the hospital sector but the community sector is ramping up,” he said, adding that he’s sensitive to the anxiety the prospect of such changes is causing staff.

In response to a reporter’s question about an ER closure, Biron said: “That is a conversation that will take place in the weeks ahead.”

The closure of ERs is always a touchy subject when hospitals merge.

There are currently three emergency departments serving Scarborough. The Scarborough Hospital has two – one at its general site on Lawrence Ave. E. and one at its Birchmount site. The third is located at the Centenary site of the Rouge Valley Health System on Ellesmere Rd.

Rouge Valley has another hospital site — the Ajax and Pickering campus in Durham Region. If Rouge Valley and the Scarborough Hospital merge, the Ajax and Pickering site would be part of the new hospital corporation but would otherwise be unaffected.

The Central East Local Health Integration Network — an arm’s length provincial agency that coordinates health care in the area — recently asked the two hospitals to look at the idea of integrating services.

Biron said it makes sense for the three hospital sites serving Scarborough to look at working together. Centenary is only 4.5 kilometres away from the general site and about 9 kilometres from the Birchmount site.

Efficiencies could be found, for example, by consolidating services to create centres of excellence and through economies of scale.

Ganderton said all Ontario hospitals have been working for years to find efficiencies because provincial funding has not kept pace with hospital inflation.

“We are getting to the point where the range of options are becoming more constrained,” he said, explaining why Scarborough and Rouge Valley are “expanding (their) horizons” and looking at merging.

Ganderton explained that the province, in an attempt to balance its budget, is capping the growth of hospital spending at 2 per cent annually. That’s down from 6 per cent or 7 per cent annually for the last decade.

But that essentially means hospitals are getting funding cuts since they are faced with cost increases of up to 5 per cent annually because of the growing and aging population, wage hikes and more expensive insurance, medical supplies and drugs.

Big savings must be found just to keep pace, Ganderton said.

Biron said the hospitals may also look at moving more ambulatory services and outpatient clinics into the community, something all Ontario hospitals are doing.

He also said that the two hospitals may look at changes to the provision of birthing and surgical services. But they won’t revisit the idea of consolidating birthing services at the Birchmount campus and splitting surgical services so overnight surgery is done at the general campus and day surgery at the Birchmount campus.

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